On 17th October 2017, NATO’S Public Diplomacy Division, in cooperation with the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, organised the 7th NATO Asia Pacific Dialogue held within the premises of the Atlantic Treaty Association (ATA) in Brussels.

This week sees the start of the 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It promises to be a momentous event confirming China’s leadership for the next five years and setting out policy directions. It is widely expected that Xi Jinping’s leadership will be strengthened but who will join him in the ruling Politburo? And in which direction will he steer the country, soon to be the largest economy in the world? Will China become a more liberal or authoritarian society? How will China respond to the mounting security challenges in its neighbourhood, most notably the nuclear ambitions of the DPRK?

On 11 October the EU-Asia Centre held a special briefing on the prospects of EU Policy towards Asia with Gunnar Wiegand, the Managing Director in the EEAS for Asia. He was joined by two discussants: Shada Islam, Director of Policy, Friends of Europe and Jana Dreyer, Editor of the Borderlex trade newsletter.

On 28 September 2017 the EU-Asia Centre, the Brussels Academy for China and European Studies (BACES) and the Confucius Institute at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), together with Egmont - Royal Institute for International Relations, Centre Européen de Recherches Internationales et Stratégiques, organized a conference on the future of EU-China-US relations – “Trilateral Relationship in an uncertain world”.

Opening the event, Fraser Cameron, Director of the EU-Asia Centre, said that we were living in very unpredictable times. Who would have thought a year ago that the EU and China would have more in common on climate change and free trade than the US? Now that Donald Trump had been in office nine months it was timely to to assess what were the prospects for the EU, US and China working together to address some of the major global challenges.

The EU is steadily increasing its ties to Asia, home of four strategic partners (China, India, Japan and Korea). More than half of the EU’s trade is with Asia and it is the biggest investment partner in most Asian countries. An FTA with Japan is nearing completion and follows a similar agreement with Korea. Negotiations with China for an investment treaty are on-going while it is hoped that the EU-India summit on 6 October will deepen cooperation with the largest democracy in the world. The EU is also seeking to increase its cooperation with Asian partners on a range of global issues from trade and climate change to migration and terrorism.

On 28 September the EU-Asia Centre organized a panel discussion on the question - How Green is China?

In the discussion questions were raised about the role of civil society actors, the car sector and consequences for domestic pollution (e-cars), the future of nuclear energy and the binding nature of the Paris agreement.

The EU-Asia Centre invites you to a panel discussion on the state of the environment in China. Beijing is now a strong defender of the Paris Climate Change Agreement and a ‘Green China’ is now propagated by the government as a top priority. China has made remarkable progress in introducing Green technology and is working with the EU on several environmental projects. At the same time there are huge challenges in cleaning up the environment, not least due to years of neglect, the emphasis on economic growth and the heavy dependence on coal.

Given the importance of the EU, the United States and China for the global system what are the prospects for trilateral cooperation in different policy areas? It might have seemed strange to consider such a question just a few years ago when the transatlantic relationship was unquestionably closer than either EU-China or US-China relations. But the swift rise of China as a global actor and especially the advent of Donald Trump as President of the US have brought about some fundamental changes.

The EU-Japan summit on 6 July which announced a political agreement on the FTA and a strategic partnership agreement (SPA) will lead to a significant deepening of the relationship. Japan is the EU’s second biggest market in Asia. More than 70,000 EU companies export to Japan (worth 86 billion euros) involving 600,000 jobs. The FTA could give a massive boost to food exports as well as chemicals and machinery. The SPA will also deepen cooperation on global issues, eg the world economy, climate change and migration, and regional problems such as the situation in Ukraine, relations with Russia, Syria, the Middle East and the DPRK.